Coming Home: Media and Returning Diaspora in Israel and Germany

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State University of New York Press, Jul 22, 2008 - Social Science - 187 pages
Coming Home provides an extraordinary glimpse into the social and cultural integration of a unique category of immigrants—the returning Diaspora. During the 1990s Russian-speaking Jews and Germans returned to their respective historic homelands. Nelly Elias explores the social and cultural adaptation of these two groups by focusing on the roles played by their native language—Russian—and the language used by the media of each country. Based on one hundred in-depth interviews conducted with immigrants now living in both Israel and Germany, Coming Home considers media use to be an inseparable part of an immigrant's adaptation strategy, simultaneously reflecting construction of a new social and cultural identity while also preserving their original cultural identities.

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Contents

IMMIGRANTS AND THE MASS MEDIA
1
1 COMING HOME? FSU IMMIGRANTS IN ISRAEL AND GERMANY
13
2 RUSSIANLANGUAGE MEDIA IN ISRAEL AND GERMANY
31
3 MEDIA AND RETURNING DIASPORA IN ISRAEL
43
4 MEDIA AND RETURNING DIASPORA IN GERMANY
101
5 MEDIA AND IMMIGRANTS ADAPTATION IN A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
141
APPENDIX
151
NOTES
155
REFERENCES
157
AUTHOR INDEX
169
SUBJECT INDEX
173
Copyright

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Page 32 - From the contents of the press it is possible to estimate the extent to which the immigrant peoples have actually taken root in the United States and accommodated themselves to the forms, conditions, and concrete purposes of American life.
Page 28 - They are obliged to inhabit at least two identities, to speak at least two cultural languages, to negotiate and 'translate' between them. In this way, though they are struggling in one sense at the margins of modernity, they are at the leading edge of what is destined to become the truly representative 'late-modern
Page 167 - In D. Prital (Ed.), In Search of Self : The Soviet Jewish Intelligentsia and the Exodus (pp.
Page 51 - Russia, it was completely secular, symbolizing the end of the year and the beginning of a new one.
Page 3 - explained . . . the mysteries of baseball to Jewish fathers. It proudly noted the increase of immigrant attendance at museums. ... It even gave instruction on the use of handkerchiefs" (ibid.: 531), facilitating immigrants' adjustment to their new surroundings.
Page 155 - From the melting pot to cultural pluralism: Production and consumption of media by and for ethnic communities, funded by the German-Israeli Foundation (GIF) for Research and Development.
Page 32 - ... it is possible to estimate the extent to which the immigrant people have actually taken root in the United States and accommodated themselves to the forms, conditions and concrete purposes of American life
Page 15 - German government calls for the "return of our German brothers and sisters who wish to live as Germans in a German country" (Joppke, 1997: 279), yet in practice Germany maintains a yearly quota system and has instituted rigid language requirements.
Page 1 - Kim's theory of cross-cultural adaptation, in which "adaptation of an individual to a given cultural environment occurs in and through communication
Page 21 - ... to the relative status and power that membership in an ethnic group accords.

About the author (2008)

Nelly Elias is Lecturer in Mass Communications at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.

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